2010 edition of the Doan Family Snow Village

It is Snow Village Saturday. And the 2010 edition is set up and ready to rock in the Holiday Season.

The annual tradition dates back to about 1983 but it has grown larger every year.

This year the village is at one end for the first time.

Only 6 hours start to finish

The One Thing

Here is the scene:

Curley is riding his horse during one scene in the movie City Slickers, and provides insight into the deep meaning of life. He holds up his finger and pronounces that it is about one thing.


Mitch, riding along side Curley gets excites and asks--"What is the one thing?" And Curley calmly tells him, "That's what you have to find out!"


Curley's one thing is different from Mitch's one thing.


My one thing is different from yours. We are each different and have different purposes that make us tick


That really struck me the other night as I was at a meeting where the discussion turned to talking about the "one thing" that really is our personal mission.


I envisioned a box, which when opened would have the one thing there--for me to see and be reminded of. The one that that is me and my personal mission/vocation in life.


Sadly it is not that easy.


I think I used to know what that one thing was--but a few years ago it got crushed and I haven't reconstructed it yet



So in my mind the other evening I opened my box and looked inside for the one thing--and it was empty. There were a lot of things hanging around outside the box--but no one thing had taken charge.



I was depressed, but I think I knew it all along.

But look at the opportunity. I get to redefine myself and my goals as I rediscover my one thing!

Wherever it is.

Dawn

I love dawn
when the sky transitions from night to day.
The first hints of light silhouette the landscape,
I can just begin to discern shapes along the horizon
but the stars remain in the still night sky.
It begins as a narrow band of light.
No color.
As it expands and dark colors begin to come into view,
I can begin to make out shapes on the landscape.
The world has no depth.
Only dark shapes on the horizon.
Dark trees and buildings.
The light continues to build,
orange gold colors of the morning begin to grace the sky.
I can begin to make out some depth in the land.
I can tell the trees are losing their leaves to the coming winter
And so quickly
The darkness is driven away by the light
The stars are gone
The world stirs from its slumber
How quickly it happens
Darkness and then light bathing the land
And I can see the colors of the trees
and the houses and the depth of the landscape.
Night is gone.
Day arrived
full of promise and plans.
And I witnessed the miracle, again.

Chewbacca -- A Puppy Arrives

Chewbacca

 

Chewie for short.

Patrick and Tina's new lab mix puppy. A bundle of fun and energy.

He is the only animal right now that can keep up with Florence--Nicole's Italian Greyhound.

Look at those eyes--they are just full of mischief.

He is a lot of fun to be around and he follows really well.

Patrick and Tina are doing a great job being pack leaders.

It is kinda cool when Ben, Makayla, Chewie, and Florence are all together. Dogs everywhere.

Then add in Ethan, Jax, and Lucas and we have our own circus.

It is what makes it all fun!

Encouragement--The Power of Building Up

Encouragement seems to be a recurring theme in my life.

In an effort to remain a positive person full of optimism and continuing to grow, I have witnessed the aftermath of a less than encouraging experience.

It is simply, destructive.

I fear we are all guilty--and not just me. I mean, I know of times when I see something which is the result of hard work on the part of another--and I find the flaw. All to often the resulting conversation goes something like: "Wow, that is a really great job, but . . . "

That, friends, is not encouragement. Encouragement would stop before the ",but . . ."

We had a message in church a week or so ago about encouragement, and I had forgotten that the command to encourage one another was so prominent in the New Testament. Paul wrote:

"Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, just as you are in fact doing."
- 1 Thess 5:11 - NIV

Pretty strong words.

I have written a few blog entries on encouragement. Tear 'em Down or Build 'em Up? Leading in a mixed up world and Leadership: The Power of "Good Job" and "Thank-you" and of course Empowerment and Encouragement.

It is a recurring theme with me because I see so many people in need of an encouraging word. I know it is tough to be encouraging when I am reviewing a document for publication and need to make changes. The goal is to make it an encouraging teaching moment rather than a demoralizing experience for the author. It is tough to do. But it needs to be done.

If I want to encourage risk takers--in thought and action; I need to encourage them and not assassinate them when the results fall short of the vision we had.

I remember the saying--every cloud has a silver lining. Now that is truly encouragement.

We learn more from adversity than from success.

So from an encouragement point of view--we'll do better next time.

Let's go out for a drink and talk this one over--get out of the office, out of the threatening professional trappings of power and leadership and talk person to person. And at the end of it all--be happy that action was taken. Be encouraged. Tomorrow can be better than today.

Leadership--the Intangible

Leadership is intangible, and therefore no weapon ever designed can replace it. Omar N. Bradley

I get a lot out of this quote from General Omar Bradley because it underscores the fundamental nature of leadership. Leadership is not a physical thing and it must be done by people--leaders. I do not believe leadership can ever be relegated to a computer to recreate. It is a skill about handling and motivating people.

So there you are---a great technician, fully knowledgeable in your area of expertise. Loving being a technician. You could be a great teacher, or a research engineer, or a software designer.

A recognized expert in your field.

Respected by peers and superiors.


And now suddenly you find yourself "promoted" into a leadership position. They (notice how we often refer to leadership above us as , "they?") want you to lead a team.


Scared? Yeah, if that is what happened to you, you should be scared because good technicians make good leaders only with assistance and if they have not offered you assistance--you are being set up for a lot of frustration and potentially failure.

That means that you must actively search out and get leadership advice. Notice I said leadership and not management. You are a manager--we all are managers. We all manage things in order to survive: the fuel in the gas tank, the money in the checking account, the groceries on our shelves. So being a manager at work is fundamentally no different than what we do every day.

But . . .

Leadership is different--it involves people.

It is intangible.

It is not easy and there is no cookbook formula for success. Why? Because every team and every person and every task in different. A good leader is able to find the style, the motivation, the approach for the specific situation or mission.

It took me a long time to understand the subtleties--but that is why leadership in the US Navy was always seemed so different from the leadership I did as an officer in the US Air Force. But now I understand, there is a different mission and set of standards that must be followed on a naval vessel as compared to an Air Force Base.

That is why leadership of a small church group is so different from leadership of a work group charged with a specific task.

The skills are similar--but are not identically transferable.

So what is needed? A discussion of the basic principles of leadership and tools for the tool box.

Most important though? Leaders need to see the person in each team member.

It is through motivating people to achieve that leaders succeed.

Monday Musings - November 15, 2010

1. I went to the doctor for a physical the other day and he gave me both good news and bad news. The good news was that I don't have any new problems to worry about. The bad news? I still have all of the old ones to deal with.

2. Why are days off from work are shorter than work days?

3. Is it really 5 o'clock somewhere? And if it is, why am I not there?

4.Watching someone's dog can be trying.

5. What do you get when you add three boys under the age of six with four dogs and try to watch a football game?

6. Weekend? What is a weekend?

7. Football is a fickle sport. Every team in the AFC North lost this week and the Cowboys won!

8. A high school in Virginia has eliminated the "F" grade. No one fails anymore. Wow, if only life were really like that. How are kids going to learn to live if they don't learn the truth about consequences and life? People fail--and that is not all bad, ask Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried chicken fame. He failed 1,000 times before he succeeded. One "A" can erase a lot of "F's."

Reflections

I decided to read through some of my first blogs the other day--to get in touch with where I've been and to help me stay true to my vision for this blog.

I found that my blogging has become a journal of my thoughts and the events in my life that I want (or not) to share with others.

And so I reread the first entries that I made as I inaugurated the blog in December 2007 and into 2008. I reviewed the entries of joy, and hope, and also the hard times surrounding the miracle baby, Jax and his stunning recovery from open heart surgery at six days old.

I reflected on how Jax is one of the smartest and most energetic kids that I know--and I recalled seeing him connected to all of the wires and tubes keeping him alive in those hours after the surgery, no one would believe it now--except for still visible straight line on his chest--that reminder of God's mercy and healing power given to this one little precious boy.

And then I ker-thunk-ed.

From the miracle of Jax I ran headlong into one of the darkest and most difficult decisions that I have ever made recorded in the entries from March and April 2008. Perhaps I was reviewing these blog entries because of a song that Eric Scott sang at the house concert which I found therapeutic. Perhaps because there are still dangling threads to this chapter of my life that need to be tied up. What ever the reason--they are still there, raw and dangling.

I saw that I had hidden within my leadership essays the pain that I was feeling during that time. The betrayal. The loss of friends and connectedness with a family of believers that I had been a member of for a long while. I chalked much of it up to life lessons, but even now, two-and-a-half years later I have a hard time getting over the broken relationships with people whom I considered not just friends--but family. When I really needed support and an arm on my shoulder--I got sermonizing and bad theology from the person who I both respected and considered to be my closest friend.


I felt that I had to leave because the bonds of trust and friendship had been crushed through words and inaction.

I was reminded at this point of a verse from Job--"Then they sat down with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, yet no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great." Job 2:13 - NIV. And I reflected that for seven days Job's friends just sat with him--they were with him and said nothing. Can you imagine sitting with someone for seven days and saying nothing? Just being there?

Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all.

I wrote some blogs which helped me deal with my hurt while also trying to help me catalog some of the leadership principles that I could see coming from the reflection on everything that brought me to make the decision--Empowerment and Encouragement and People or process? Where's the joy? These two blogs were the first in my Leadership Series and they also were ripe with the pain I was feeling. Another Leadership Series blog about Co-leadership is also based upon my experience and it has been read worldwide and I have received more email about this entry than any other blog I have written. It is apparently widely used in some colleges.

Sadly, though I wrote of my pain and frustration--my friend never pursued me, so I know that the relationship was one-way. I believe this because when I lose something, or something gets lost, like keys or a dog or a cat, I pursue it. I look for it. I find it! Are not people and their relationships worth even more than the relationship with a dog or cat? Yet, through this I felt as if I have been erased from the memory despite my occasional attempts to reconnect, which so far have been rebuffed.

The whole situation is like a festering sore that is quiet for a while and then flares up. And then I bury it again and forget it. But some nights, when I have insomnia, I remember the good times and wonder how they went so terribly bad. I think is was a package deal, all wrapped up in the emotion of Jax's crisis and the family coming together.

But it is still out there--in the dark nights, in the blogs, in my heart. Maybe like Eric Scott, I should write a song.

Or a blog.

To read again in a few years.

But I stopped reviewing my blog at that point. Who knows what else is hidden in there, clawing at the prison bars to escape? I'm almost afraid to look.

Flying Old Glory - Update

Sanity reigns.

This just in from California regarding my post from earlier this morning:

A news article from this mornings Turlock Journal

Cody Alicea can fly his flag again:

However, after an outcry was raised locally and from afar, the district reversed that call on Friday, once again allowing Alicea to fly Old Glory.

This is critical and a huge victory for patriotism. But the article also points out some of the rest of the story.

The way it happened:

“A school employee said some students have been complaining about my flag and I needed to take it down,” Alicea said. “So I took it down. I was kind of mad and upset because I have been flying it for two months and all of a sudden its Veterans week and it’s a problem.”

The Denair Unified School District backed up the campus supervisor’s decision, in part because they had previously made other students stop displaying the flag of Mexico on Cinco de Mayo.

I had forgotten that Denair was the district which had banned the Mexican flag on Cinco de Mayo. But still--banning the American flag is a lot different. Like--this is the U.S. and not Mexico.

And by the way--the victory at Puebla on Cinco de Mayo was a victory for all of North America and probably allowed the Civil War to end with the United States re-unified rather than two separate countries.

But--that is a story for another day.

Congrats Cody and all Americans--we can still fly our flag in the USA!

Whose Flag are they Talking About?

Published yesterday--November 12, from the people's democratic republic of California comes the following news item:

School Makes Boy Take American Flag Off Bike
Elissa Harrington FOX40 News
November 12, 2010
DENAIR -
13-year-old Cody Alicea rides with an American flag on the back of his bike. He says he does this to be patriotic and to honor veterans, like his own grandfather, Robert. He's had the flag on his bike for two months but Monday, was asked told to take it down.

A school official at Denair Middle School told Cody some students had been complaining about the flag and it was no longer allowed on school property.

"In this country we're supposed to be free," said Cody. "And I should be able to wave my flag wherever I want to. And they're telling me I can't."


There is a little bit more to the story--but these are the salient paragraphs, click on the title link for the complete text.

I did a little research on this. Denair is a public school system and therefore, presumably, it flys an American flag in front of the school and probably has an American flag in every classroom. So I wonder--how could they ban an American flag from school property?

The Denair Middle School has a website which, when I last checked, made no mention of the report--but the site was running, as you might suspect, very slowly.

They did not call it an safety hazard--just an unspecified complaint.

I wish all the kids would ride their bikes with American flags on them! It is what i was bemoaning on Veteran's Day about the schools not promoting patriotism--but rather an educational based humanistic socialism.

I bet young Cody was just having too much fun being a proud American.

We can't have that, can we?